Explicit Wait vs Implicit Wait – What is best for me?

This article is intended to throw light on the two types of waits supported by Selenium WebDriver – Explicit Wait and Implicit Wait.

What is Explicit Wait

An explicit wait is the code that we write to wait for a certain condition to occur before moving on further in the code. There are some convenience methods available that will help us to write code that will wait only as long as required. WebDriverWait class in association with ExpectedConditions class is one way to achieve it.

Code sample that shows the usage of the above mentioned classes is:

What is Implicit Wait

An ImplicitWait is to tell WebDriver to wait for a certain amount of time when looking for an element and the element is not immediately available.

Code sample that shows the usage of ImplicitWait is:

The default setting in implicitlyWait() is 0.

What is best for me?

Using ExplicitWait is the preferred choice because:

1.   In case of Explicit Wait, the WebDriverWait class will call/ping the ExpectedConditions class every 500 miliseconds whereas in the case of Implicit Wait, the ping time is 1000 miliseconds so the margin of error is less by 500 miliseconds.

2.   Secondly, once set, implicit wait remains set for the lifetime of the webdriver object instance which is not the case with Explicit Wait.

Hope this article helps to understand the concept of waits in Selenium WebDriver. Comments are welcome.